updates

Well my semester is finally over, and my hair is just starting to de-gray itself. This was one crazy semester, and I'm not kidding when I say that I am still having nightmares about due dates and things.

But now it is all over and I have all sorts of time to muck about with my code! Kind of.

First I need to detox for a few days. Nothing but a steady diet of my favorite games and sleep. I've been playing coop Dawn of War II with my bro, coop Halo: Reach with a buddy of mine, the incredibly simple and charming Killing Floor (one of my favorite mindless shooters of all time), and a little Battle For Middle Earth (1) for nostalgia.

I got the urge to write a bit after playing the latter again. Battle for Middle Earth (BFME) is such a bold and unique RTS, I am amazed it came out of EA (by the team that used to be Westwood). There are so many cool design decisions, I don't know where to start.

I guess I'll start with this: To be fair, the game is flawed. The balance is pretty wonky, with archers, for some reason, being the end-all-be-all unit of warfare perfection. It is jarring, even maddening, to see your incredibly expensive yet deliciously menacing and massive Mummakil get put down in 5 seconds flat by two units of upgraded archers. Eww.

But I don't want to talk about that. I want to praise this game, after all. So I'll talk about how this game is so different from any RTS you've played. Mainly, this game is a siege centric RTS, like Stronghold but without any of the medieval simulation bits and instead focusing exclusively on fighting. The siege theme really makes sense when you think of it. I mean, think of the coolest, most video game worthy moments from the films. What were they? The sieges of Helms Deep and Minas Tirith, naturally. And the game does a pretty decent job of bring those epic film quality sieges to the player.

The game also does something else that I've never seen, before or since, in an RTS. It gave the AI natural emotions and behaviors. This impacts the game on both a cosmetic and gameplay level.

Cosmetically, these AI behaviors mean that your little army dudes will never just be standing around looking stiff and silly like in any other RTS. For example, if you leave your orks alone for a while they will form a ring and two of them will start sparring at the center of it. Your trolls will push and shove eachother around. If your men see a regular sized enemy from across the battlefield they will start clanging their weapons together and cheering, psyching up for the coming battle. It does a lot to make the game feel more alive.

On the gameplay side of things, units having realistic behavior can have quite an impact. Put your soldiers up against a rampaging troll and they will act afraid, and won't fight very well. Your men always do end up following your orders, but if your order is a clear suicide march then they will be a little sluggish in following your command. Set an ent on fire and he will freak out and run around to find water to put himself out in. Set a Mummakil on fire and he will go on a rampage, trying to shake off the flaming archer tent on his back.

All in all, the game is really something unique, and the design would have been worth exploring. Unfortunately, they decided that the design wasn't worth exploring at all when they made the sequel. In BFME II gone are the sieges, the behavioral AI, the everything that made BFME I fun except for the Lord of the Rings theme. BFME only got decent but not great reviews, maybe that is what prompted the developers to make BFME II a more conventional RTS in every way. Whatever the reason, if you are looking to buy the better game of the series then buy the first.

By the bye, on the code side of things: I will have an update on my Dating Sim very soon. I'm also not done with Quake - I just can't quit it.

UPDATE: Changes are a-comin'.

Yeah, yeah. It has been awhile and all that. I won't bother throwing any excuses your way, I've mostly just been lazy. I've also been incredibly busy with school, sick, and working on a new SDL game that I haven't told you about.

So I guess I will bother throwing excuses your way. Whatevs.

Work on the Quake game has been nonexistant. There is a reason for this: I'm so bored with it! One of the little truths you discovier about game development is that the hardest part (and there are plenty of hard parts) is the very end, when all major development is done.

All of the major coding is done, the asset work is all done, and the map is finished. What remains is testing and tweaking, and MAN is it a drag. This last stage of development consists of tweaking some little value in the code or piece of the map, and then testing it out. Rinse and repeat a billion times. The only challenge is to your patience, and I guess lately I've been losing that battle.

That said, I really do want to get this game out and soon. With that in mind, I'm instituting something called "Quake Thursdays" around here.

Yes, every Thursday is now "Quake Thursday". I promise to work on the Quake game for at least a couple hours, at the end of which I'll post a bunch of screenshots here on the blog to show you what I'm doing. Hopefully this will see the game to a fairly quick release.

In other news, as I stated earlier I have started work on a new SDL game. I'll give more details soon, but for now I can say that it will be a little game that should be quick and easy to produce (coding wise, the assets are scaring me a bit), and will hopefully pretty fun. I'm toying with the idea of actually selling this one, so I'm pretty excited about it.

Hmm, what else? A gaming news site called Ultima Aiera has made its way into my list of daily must-visit sites. Specifically, it has news about the Ultima series of games and about the creators who had a hand in bringing the games to life.

'How much news could there be about a series that has been dead for a decade?', I hear you ask. Well as it turns out, a pretty good amount of news can be generated about a series that has been dead for a decade. Dick. There are tons of remakes and updates to the series to be reported on, as well as hopeful (though ultimately futile) rumors of the series being continued or restarted again. But more important and interesting are the articles that showcase the old design documents and artwork from the venerable games. It makes for some good game design reading, if you are into that sort of thing.

Other cool things: In Por Ylem 2 has gone into beta, marking yet another experiment with unrestricted PVP in an MMO environment. These experiments always prove interesting. You get to see just how much crap regular players, who make up the bulk of the playerbase, can take from unabashed a-hole players, who exist for no other reason than to ruin the game experience of those regular players, before the regular players give up and leave. Once the normal players leave, the a-holes, having nobody else to torment other than eachother, themselves leave and the game collapses.

We've seen this countless times (the original UO, the original In Por Ylem, Shadowbane, Darkfall) before. Yet there is always some designer who wants to try the experiment again, I guess thinking that this time it will be different. Who can blame him? On paper the concept of near-completely unrestricted PVP is brilliant. Sadly, it just never works, mostly because there are too many players who will take advantage of the loose ruleset and use it to ruin the game for the other players.

Anywho, I don't want to get into that. So many other, better and more experienced than me, designers have gone into it before.

All I want to say is that Azaroth is taking another crack at In Por Ylem. He has brought some interesting design decisions with him, and hopefully some lessons learned from the original In Por Ylem. If anybody can get open pvp right, it's Azaroth with IPY2.

Oh, and I beat Ultima 8: Pagan. I've been playing this thing for over 15 years! Everybody will tell you about much much crap Ultima 8 was, and it does have its annoyances and plot holes. Still, it was always be my favorite (and first) Ultima, and one of the games that originally made me want to make games myself. Cheers, Pagan.